Lighting Ratcheting Focus Wrench (3/4, 5/8)

TL;DR - Shockingly strong and durable for plastic, but still not metal.  Works great in a pinch or as a tool to give to volunteers, will not loosen over tightened bolts.  Print in stiff plastic (PLA, PLA-CF, Polycarbonate, Nylon, etc.) with 5+ walls, 20%+ gyroid infill for best results.

This has been almost a year of trial and error, testing and revising.

I am a huge fan of the Klein Tools 68204 wrench for hanging theatrical lighting instruments, however they keep getting more and more expensive.  Working in an education world with students, they tend to get “lost” or wander off, so I wanted to find a cheaper solution to hand to them.

These 100% 3D printed/print in place ratcheting wrenches have a standard 12 point 3/4 inch socket for a standard yoke bolt, an 8 point 1/2 inch socket for a standard (square head) pipe bolt, and a pair of non-ratcheting 5/16 8 point sockets for the (square head) pan bolt.

Despite being plastic, these turned out to be surprisingly durable.  Printed in PLA, these wrenches have made it through at least one complete load in/load out before showing signs of wear.  Printed in polycarbonate, the only failures I've had came from people attempting to over-tighten bolts or loosen bolts that had previously been over-tightened.  Make no mistake, they are not metal and cannot replace a metal wrench, but I keep a dozen in my truck for any helpers who don't have their own tools.

As mentioned, I highly recommend printing in PC.  This puts the cost of each wrench at ~$1.50.  In PLA, each wrench costs less than $1.00.  I haven't tried nylon or any CF variants, but I expect they'd do just as well.  Softer plastics like ASA, ABS, and PETG will not work.  The bolts will chew up the sockets and the handle deforms enough to break the spring mechanism.

I have also found different brands of PLA have vastly different strength characteristics.  For example, I can tell you that Polymaker's PolyTerra and Panchroma materials are too “bendy” and failed for me.  Same with Bambu's PLA Sparkle.

At the same time, PolyMax PLA, PolyLite PLA Pro, and Bambu PLA Galaxy worked just fine.  PolyMax PC has become my go to, all of my recent wrenches have been printed in it.

I print these on a Bambu Lab P1S  on the “0.2mm Strength” profile using Gyroid infill.

The most important setting seems to be the number of wall loops - you want a minimum of 5 to make the “socket” portions completely solid.

There are a number of files attached

“Clicky Wrench Final Embossed Labels” has on/off labels cut into the plastic for single color printers

“Clicky Wrench Final Color Labels” is a .3mf file containing the wrench and on/off labels as separate bodies for multi-color printing.  You may get a message about small parts suggesting converting from inch to millimeter - press no.  Some of the text characters are just small.

“Clicky Wrench Batch” is the Bambu Studio file that I use to batch out several at once

If you print them and they work for you, let me know!  But more importantly, if you use them and they fail, please post pictures - I'm always looking for weak points that I can improve upon.